


(Pre)occupation

by DesertScribe



Category: Evil Dead (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Gun Violence, spring break gone wrong
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:40:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25413301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesertScribe/pseuds/DesertScribe
Summary: Linda doesn't want to let a two day late start and some probably baseless worries ruin her and Ash's spring break getaway.- or -What if Annie had gotten to the cabin first?
Relationships: Linda/Ash Williams
Comments: 3
Kudos: 4
Collections: Multifandom Horror Exchange (2020)





	(Pre)occupation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Missy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/gifts).



When her boyfriend first suggested getting away from campus for spring break, Linda had jumped at the opportunity. Then, assorted last minute minor emergencies and inconveniences had forced them to postpone their departure two days in a row, until the anticipation was practically killing both of them.

Now, however, Linda was beginning to have some doubts about whether she had made the right decision. She loved Ash and suspected that he might be planning to propose to her soon, maybe even on this very trip, but the way that they kept turning off onto increasingly smaller and more poorly marked roads was making her just a little bit nervous.

Their route took them from interstates to regular state route highways to backroads that twisted through the mountains and now to a single lane gravel road. They had only managed to find the last turnoff because Ash's written driving directions had included the exact distance they needed to count on the odometer after passing a specific distinctly shaped tree, and they were getting farther from civilization with each passing minute. The nearest phone was probably miles away, never mind the nearest hospital. If either of them happened to fall on a sharp rock while collecting firewood or any of the countless mundane accidents that could happen to a person going about daily life, getting help would be a serious challenge. Linda knew these worries were probably baseless, since it wasn't as if either of them were particularly clumsy or anything like that, but this was also the first time they had gone off alone together to anywhere quite so remote. And now that she thought about it, she wasn't sure if either of them had remembered to tell anyone else where they were going.

"God, Ash," Linda finally blurted out, just to distract herself from her own nagging thoughts, "where did you even hear about this place?"

"Being Professor Smith's teaching assistant might be hard work, but it isn't a completely thankless job," Ash said, giving Linda a smug grin which quickly turned more sheepish as focusing his attention on her instead of watching the road quickly let to him driving straight into one of the road's many potholes.

Both Linda and the car's suspension (and Ash too, though Linda was sure he would only ever admit it later if she got him tipsy and started tickling him while they were both at least half naked) let out involuntary squeaks at the impact.

"No harm done," Ash announced after a moment of continued driving. "The front end was due for an alignment soon anyway, and if we had punctured the tire it would be starting to show by now." He reached out and gave the dashboard of the Delta 88 an apologetic pat. "Now, um, what had I been saying?"

"You were telling me how you heard about this place," Linda said. "And eyes up front while you're talking this time, mister," she added, sternly poking him in the shoulder for emphasis. "If you hit another pothole and blow out the tire for real this time, then when we get back I'm going to tell every single one of your friends about it. And I'll make sure to tell your sister in especially vivid detail."

"Oh no, anything but that," Ash laughed.

"Well if that's not enough of a threat, then I'll also make you sleep outside the first night," Linda said, warming up to her mock tirade. "Instead of getting to enjoy _my_ beautiful body, you'll wake up tomorrow to find an opossum having a litter of babies in your hair or something equally gross. That'll mean you'll spend the next night alone too, because I refuse to share a bed with a man who's had opossums in his hair until he has showered thoroughly at least a half dozen times and I doubt a little cabin out in the middle of nowhere will have enough hot water for you to do that."

"Alright, alright, no need to go all draconian," Ash said, still laughing but doing as he was told. "This is me keeping my eyes on the road. See? Anyway, like I had been saying, Professor Smith isn't a bad guy to work for. When he heard me complaining about how all the lake houses near campus were already booked up for spring break, he gave me the keys to this place to use for free!"

"He let you have his cabin? Just like that?"

"Well, it's not exactly _his_ cabin," Ash said. "It's more like his friend's cabin, and his friend said he could borrow it whenever he wanted. Smith figured that him sending us to stay there was more or less like going there himself."

"You make it sound suspiciously like Professor Smith isn't going to tell his friend about us using his cabin," Linda said as the trees which had been hemming in the narrow road they were driving along suddenly disappeared to reveal a steel girder bridge stretching across a deep ravine. It was kind of impressive in a desolate and forbidding sort of way.

"Even if Smith wanted to tell Professor Knowby, he can't," Ash said, slowing down to reduce the chances of knocking off one or both of the car's side mirrors on the thick I-beams. "He says the guy's on sabbatical until next year at least, off doing some archaeological dig in England or something. He's been too busy to return any but the most important calls for months. Even his own department barely has any communication with him. Trust me, it'll be fine, Linda. As long as we clean up after ourselves and don't blow up the cabin or anything, no one but Professor Smith will ever know we were there."

The Delta 88 exited the far end of the bridge with a _clunk_ as the road's previously gravel surface gave way to a thick wooden planks. A few dozen yards later, the wooden planks gave way to a bare dirt track which continued through more woods (slightly sparser, but with older looking, more gnarled trees than what they had been driving through up until then) for another quarter of a mile until finally arriving at their destination.

The cabin's boarded-up windows made the place less picturesque than Linda had hoped, and that was putting it politely. The look of horror on her face as she stepped out of the car must have been more blatant than she thought, because instead of going to get their bags, Ash instead came around to her side of the car and swept her up into his arms to laughingly twirl her around while carrying her up onto the porch.

"Don't worry," he whispered in her ear, planting kisses on her cheeks to distract her every time she turned her head to try to get a better look at the cabin. "The place might not be much to look at from here, but it's not like our plans involved spending much time looking at any part of it but a darkened bedroom."

"You always know the exact ridiculous thing to say to make me feel better, Ash," Linda said, joining in his quiet laughter and kissing him back as he set her down by the door to free up both hands for finding the key and letting them inside. "And you're right, I shouldn't worry. I'm sure we're going to have a great time as long as you keep me busy enough."

As it turned out, Linda was wrong. Her problem wasn't that she worried too much but that she hadn't worried enough, because the place was also less uninhabited than she would have hoped, which was revealed by someone blasting a hole in the front door from the inside as Ash was trying to unlock it. Ash collapsed to the ground with an inarticulate yell, clutching his bleeding arm.

For a split second, Linda's only thought was a detached observation of, _So much for no one but Professor Smith ever knowing we were here._ Then the reality of the situation caught up with the rest of her brain, and she realized that whatever kind of a person shot at other people through closed doors probably wasn't going to stop at one shot and call it a job well done. They had to get out of there fast, or they were both going to die.

Not waiting for Ash to get up on his own, Linda grabbed at him and dragged him away from the door as best as she could, but she hadn't even gotten him off the porch before the door was kicked open (a much easier feat now that the wood around the latch had been destroyed) to reveal the dimly lit figure of a blood-soaked woman with a long double-barreled shotgun. Finding herself so close to what must obviously be a deranged killer, Linda could only freeze and watch in horror like a deer caught in headlights as the woman swung the gun around to point it at her without even seeming to focus on her target, like a trigger-happy hunter reacting to the first sign of movement caught out of the corner of his eye without caring whether he was shooting at a wild turkey or his own hunting buddy.

She probably would have died, murdered where she crouched in terror, if Ash hadn't gotten over the initial pain and surprise of getting peppered with buckshot and wood splinters enough to get his feet back under him and pull her out of the way in the nick of time.

"This is all just a misunderstanding," Ash shouted over his shoulder as the two of them ran back to the car. He opened the driver's side door and shoved Linda inside, which at first seemed sensible, given the state of his arm, but then he kept pushing and climbed in after her, apparently intending to be their getaway driver after all, so Linda scrambled over into the passenger seat as quickly as she could to make room for her. Ash winced as he turned the key with his injured hand, but wasted no time before he gunned the engine and sped them away from the cabin, in reverse because he obviously didn't want to take the time to turn the car around until they were out of sight of the maniac with the gun, who had already managed to reload her shotgun and was raising it to take aim at them again.

Linda didn't know how far away you needed to be from a gun before buckshot wasn't dangerous anymore. She didn't know whether was one of those crazies like her uncle Jeff who believed in loading shotguns with alternating buckshot and solid slugs for maximum versatility in killing things. She was lucky enough to not need to discover either of those facts firsthand, though what prevented this from happening was perhaps even more disturbing than being shot at, because Linda saw something like a bent and mangled body come crawling out of the cabin at a far higher speed than any human in that kind of condition should be able to manage, forcing the woman to turn her attention away from the fleeing couple and deal with the more immediate target. The last Linda saw of the situation before Ash got them around the first turn and hid it all from view was the woman letting loose on the person? thing? with both barrels, right in its already twisted remnants of a face.

Even with the car's roaring engine and the crunch of gravel under its tires, the noise was horrible.

"Are you okay?" Ash asked breathlessly, as he finally got the car turned around so they could stop driving in reverse.

"I think so," Linda said without much conviction. "What about you?"

"Good enough to get us the hell out of here," Ash said as crossed the rusty bridge at about three times the speed he had gone in the opposite direction mere minutes before.

 _Maybe it was just as well that I'm not the one driving, because I might be going into shock_ , Linda thought to herself as the pounding in her ears was replaced like the kind of roaring she had always expected a tornado to sound like. And with that, she fainted, completely unaware of the dark streaks which were beginning to slowly spread across Ash's arm, radiating out from where the buckshot and splinters had pierced his flesh.

**The End**

Except it's not the end, because it's never really the end for the Chosen One.

But at least this time he'll have his girlfriend along for the ride while he gets dragged along cursing and fighting to where fate says he needs to be….


End file.
